如何避免“桑迪”式瘫痪重演

    “桑迪”飓风充分暴露了美国电力和运输系统的脆弱性。纽约市是世界主要经济中心之一，而且我们明知“桑迪”飓风就要来了，但还是不能避免纽约被“桑迪”摧毁的命运。作为全球市场的两条大动脉，纽交所（NYSE）和纳斯达克（Nasdaq）也全部停盘——尽管它们在“9•11”事件后为城市应急系统投资了那么多钱。美国有10个州的810万人失去了电力，在美国，因“桑迪”飓风死亡的人数超过了100人。

    那么，我们应该如何对我们的城市进行升级，让它们在如此恶劣的条件下也能维持运转？我们应该把钱投到基础建设的哪些地方，才能收到最好的回报？答案可能隐藏在另一个重要系统的设计上——互联网。

    互联网的设计很有韧性，即使一部分网络出现故障，整个网络还可以继续运转。现代互联网的先驱“阿帕网”（ARPANET）的设计者们为他们的网络选择了一个没有中心节点的分布式系统，使信息通过多个通道从起点发送到终点，以避免单点故障。这也是互联网今天为何如此繁荣的原因之一，即使它被黑客攻击了，或是它的硬件因自然灾害而遭到破坏，信息也可以绕过故障点，到达接收方那里。

    我们的电网设计却和互联网完全不同。如果一条线路上发生了任何故障，这条线路上的所有用户都会失去电力。史蒂芬·约翰逊在他的新书《将来完成时》（Future Perfect）中把这种网络称为“罗格朗星”（Legrand Star）网络，仅次于法国的中央节点铁路系统。事实证明，我们的电网比普通的中央节点网络更容易发生故障。2003年，一次突然停电导致4,500万美国人的家庭瞬间失去了电力供应。其实，在那次灾难中，仅仅是因为俄亥俄州的一座电厂发生了事故，就导致整个美国东部停电。如果有黑客从多个节点攻击我们的电力系统，那么又会发生什么情况？

    到目前为止，我们并没有从那起灾难中汲取什么教训，而且几乎没有采取任何措施。美国的电网恰好就是纳西姆·泰力布在他的新书《反脆弱》（Anti-fragile）中描述的那种脆弱的系统。泰力布在书中警告我们，必须重新设计系统，从故障中汲取教训，变得更强大。

    今天，我们的电网仍和2003年大断电时一样脆弱——甚至可能比那时还要更脆弱。目前向下曼哈顿区提供电力的电网还是美国的第一个电网，早在19世纪90年代由大发明家托马斯·爱迪生建造。现在该是时候升级纽约市和全美国的基础设施了。我们可以采取以下几个步骤来增加美国电网的可靠性和抗风险性。

    Hurricane Sandy revealed the vulnerability of our power and transportation systems. New York City, one of the world's major economic centers, was brought to its knees by a storm that we knew was coming. The NYSE and Nasdaq exchanges -- the lifeblood of world markets -- were closed, despite all their investment since 9/11 in backup systems. More than 8.1 million people lost power across ten states. More than one hundred people died in the US.

    How can we upgrade our cities so that they function during such adverse conditions? Where should we invest in infrastructure to get the best return? Answers may lie in the design of another crucial system: the Internet.

    The internet was built to be resilient -- it was engineered to keep functioning even if part of the network went down. The designers of ARPANET, the precursor of the modern internet, chose a distributed system with no central node for their network. They found ways to route information in multiple paths from origin to destination to avoid a single-point of-failure fault. This is one reason why the Web is so robust today, even when it is attacked by hackers or its physical elements by natural disasters, information can be re-routed around the fault to reach its recipients.

    Unlike the internet, our power grid is architected such that if any fault takes place along a line, all customers on that line lose power. Steven Johnson calls these "Legrand Star" networks in his new book, Future Perfect, after the central-node railway system in France. It turns out that our power grid is even more fault-prone than a central-node network. In 2003, 45 million Americans lost power due to a sudden blackout. In that disaster, the entire Eastern half of the US lost power when just one utility plant in Ohio went offline. What would happen if hackers tried to take down the system at multiple points?

    And yet, we learned little from that catastrophe and did seemingly nothing about it. Our grid is the very definition of the fragile system that Nassim Taleb warns against in his new book, Anti-fragile.Taleb urges us to redesign systems to learn from failure points and get stronger.

    Our grid today is just as fragile as it was in the blackout of 2003 -- maybe even more so. The grid that serves lower Manhattan was the first utility network in the country, built by Thomas Edison in the 1890s. It's time to upgrade the infrastructure in NYC and across the US. Here are specific steps we can take to increase the reliability and resiliency of our electric grid: